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The new Mac Pro was the first glimmer of hope. Now I read that they are releasing updated mbp 13 without touchbar. If they start offering full powered full port
by rorykoehler 7y ago
The new Mac Pro was the first glimmer of hope. Now I read that they are releasing updated mbp 13 without touchbar. If they start offering full powered full port mbp 13 without touchbar my optimisim will be back.
- maxxxxx 7y agoI think Apple’s problem will be that Jobs usually had a very good feeling which radical change will get accepted and which won’t. The current Apple will probably listen to customer feedback but I doubt they will be able to release game changers like iPod or iPhone.
- threeseed 7y agoApple Watch has been a game changer in some respects. I don't think anybody expected it to be as successful as it has been. And the feature set and their acquisitions e.g. Beddit gives a really interesting insight into where Apple is heading in the health sector.
- ekianjo 7y ago> I don't think anybody expected it to be as successful as it has been How do you measure success? Because there is no way any comparison with the number of people who own an iPhone or any other kind of Apple device. Even in Japan where Apple has the lion share of the smartphone market I hardly see people with an Apple watch.
- toasterlovin 7y agoFWIW, I see Apple watches everywhere in the U.S. Even (especially?) on totally normal people.
- batiudrami 7y agoWhere in the US? I saw more Airpods during my 8 hour stopover in SF than I had seen in my entire life prior in Australia. It's a different world.
- rorykoehler 7y agoLoads of people wear them in Australia.
- DEADBEEFC0FFEE 7y agoCertainly in Sydney. I notice because I think they're over priced at AU$250, and I'm surprised how many school kids have them. I would lose them in a week.
- sundvor 7y agoHeaps in Melbourne as well. Personally I find them daggy; if they're anything like the earphones included with the iPhone 3 they'd fall out of my ears if I just turned my head. Samsung Buds OTOH stay in (and don't have the daggy bits hanging out).
- toasterlovin 7y agoI also have had problems with Apple's wired earphones staying in, so I was skeptical of the AirPods. But they stay in great. Turns out that most of the problem was the weight of the cord.
- canuckintime 7y ago> and I'm surprised how many school kids have them. You might also be surprised how many are knockoffs [1] which are rapidly improving in quality [2]: [1] https://www.macworld.com/article/3311456/airpods-knockoffs-tested-sometimes-you-get-what-you-pay-for.html https://www.macworld.com/article/3311456/airpods-knockoffs-t... [2] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ml3wayRMK_s https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ml3wayRMK_s
- 7y ago
- TheOtherHobbes 7y agoIn the UK they've sold well to C1s and some C2s, but not so much to the Bs and some As who are Apple's traditional market. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NRS_social_grade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NRS_social_grade The amazing thing about the classic Apple designs was the way they managed to be textbook Veblen goods while also appearing to be gender and class neutral. They were aspirationally expensive, but not blingy. That changed when gold and pink started to creep into the design vocabulary and the prices started moving up. The classic designs were more democratic. Not everyone could afford them, but they managed the neat trick of appearing to be visually inclusive rather than aggressively exclusive. From that POV, Watch has been a design failure. It lacks the social status of the high-end I-have-money watch brands. It's neither expensive-but-neutral nor an outrageously self-indulgent statement product. The expensive straps and stainless steel variants made a pitch for the latter, but it was never convincing. As a signifier it's visually bland and even slightly vulgar, which is why it hasn't had the same cultural impact. It's also why it works for C1/C2s but not for the ABs. Sales may be fine, but in its current form it's never going to be the covert high status product that Apple used to do so well.
- throwaway2048 7y agoApple products, while expensive in a general consumer goods sense are not anywhere near the pricing of a typical Veblen good, they have never been particularly status driven throughout their history in either computers or phones, and their sales violate the textbook definition of a Veblen good, sales dropped substantially when prices increased. Apple is much more in line with a premium brand driven good like Nike, or Sony. A true Veblen good phone would cost like $20000, be gold cased and nobody you know would own one.
- arethuza 7y agoVertu tried that approach with phones - didn't work out too well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertu [Only ever saw them on sales at Heathrow Terminal 5 and Courchevel 1850]
- stouset 7y ago> Because there is no way any comparison with the number of people who own an iPhone Apparently you measure success by "besting the single greatest consumer product success story in a generation". By this metric, virtually nothing would be considered a success. Meanwhile, Apple became the biggest watchmaker in the world as of 2017. After only three years of producing watches, they unseated literally every other watchmaker in the world on revenue. That seems pretty damned successful to me.
- bryanrasmussen 7y agoI guess there would have to be one success per generation.
- yoz-y 7y agoFunny thing was that stories about how the Apple Watch is a flop continued well past the point when Apple lapped all of the watchmakers out there. Some bullshit stories just won't die.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- apetrovic 7y agoReally? I live in Europe, where iPhone is hardly dominant, and I see Apple Watches everywhere.
- badestrand 7y ago> Apple Watch has been a game changer in some respects. I don't think anybody expected it to be as successful as it has been. It has disappointed, actually, according to the very article we are commenting on: "The company sold about 10 million units in the first year, a quarter of what Apple forecast"
- threeseed 7y agoThat was in the first year. Apple Watch has taken a while to get up to speed but is now doing really well. You definitely can see it on more people's wrists than in the early days.
- badestrand 7y agoOkay, thank you, I didn't know that.
- vitorgrs 7y agoApple Watch is the best-selling watch... And the "Wearables, Home, and Accessories" revenue was 5.1 billion last quarter, which is bigger than iPad Revenue of 4.8 billion. I actually think that Watch sales is a surprise on how well it is. Nobody expected it would be that good.
- thinkingemote 7y agoApple watch is for people who already have an iPhone. It's not a game changer for a wider market it's a peripheral. a successful peripheral.
- kccqzy 7y agoThe original iPod is a peripheral for people who already have Macs. Even later on, the iPod is a peripheral for people who already have either a Mac or a Windows PC. My point is, peripherals can be successful and game-changing.
- rorykoehler 7y agoApple Watch has some great features. Most of it's features are things I actively avoid though (ie notifications etc).
- enraged_camel 7y ago>> Now I read that they are releasing updated mbp 13 without touchbar Where did you read this?
- rorykoehler 7y agohttps://www.macrumors.com/2019/06/24/macbook-air-macbook-escape-2019-refresh-rumor/ https://www.macrumors.com/2019/06/24/macbook-air-macbook-esc...
- chrisweekly 7y agoThe new mac pro is a sweet piece of hardware, but you have to take the price into account. I remain unimpressed.
- 6nf 7y agoNot sure what you expected with the pricing, Apple isn’t known for bargains.
- chrisweekly 7y ago$12,000 is a little excessive.
- threeseed 7y agoIt starts at $5999. And you should only be buying the monitor if you are after a reference quality display. In which case you would know how cheap it is.
- frostburg 7y agoThe base model is unfit for purpose for basically every possible buyer.
- cmsj 7y agoI've argued that that's probably deliberate - everyone buying the new Pro ought to need a lot of something. For some people it'll be CPU, some people GPU, some people RAM, some storage, etc. The base model has a good enough CPU if all you need is loads of GPU, a good enough GPU if all you need is loads of CPU, etc, etc. tl;dr the only people who buy the base model will be the enthusiasts who just want a Mac Pro, and they are indeed getting a bad deal, but this machine isn't for them, however much they want it to be.
- danieldk 7y ago
- sneak 7y agoRegardless of how you feel about Apple's design choices, recent improvements in both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi mean that it's clear to even those that can't predict the future that wired/corded connections are going to be obsolete for all but the highest bandwidth (i.e. Thunderbolt/PCI/uncompressed UHD+ display) interfaces (and, of course, power). Most peripherals used by most people will be entirely wireless. This isn't an Apple thing, this is just the way things are going in our industry. If you want "full port", invent a time machine and travel back to the time when people accepted cables. That time is gone now.
- hrktb 7y agoThe general direction an industry is going isn't usually the issue. Most designers can predict the general trends in an 'infinite timescale'. The issue comes to when it's a acceptables trade-off. I think for now the wireless future is not here yet, and won't be for the next year or 18 months. Apple didn't pull it off with it's AirPods (too pricy for wide adoption, still lag in the bluetooth stack, only 3 or 3 designs available for something that needs to fit on people's ear), I'd say they were too early to pull the plug on wired.
- sneak 7y agoThis argument has been made since the iMac without a floppy drive or non-USB serial port. If they were too early, people would stop buying their devices because of the "lack" of functionality. They haven't. That means that the people who claim they're too early were wrong. It turns out that most people who buy computers and most people who complain about the range of ports on computers are not the same size groups, and are mostly not comprised of the same people.
- hrktb 7y agoThe pace of purchase of the laptops and iPhones slowed down though. It can be attributed to a lot of factors, but we can't make the blanket argument "it's selling more than ever so they can't be doing it wrong" anymore.
- 7y ago
- jxdxbx 7y agoNot just the Mac Pro, but the iMac Pro, Mac mini, and iPad Pros are all outstanding computers. (No, Apple will never make an affordable, upgradable mid-tower, but the new Mac mini plus an external GPU is close.) I'd say keep the Touch Bar, but add an escape key.